Welcome to the Hooniverse Classic Captions Post. Once again it’s that time of the week in which this feature appears (after a brief vacation), so it’s now time to review the premise; I search for images that were used by the car companies in their print advertising or brochures, and it is your job to provide a humorous caption that is some how tied in with the image. This week we have an image brought to you by an Advertising Agency who really isn’t sure who the target audience is for this car…

Last time, we had an image of a Sporty Camaro in a new car showroom, and for some reason the responses were a little on the light side (So I say again, what’s up with that?) The runner-up comment was from mkep819, who seems to be a regular participant in our contest lately. His caption went like this: “Johnny, the state Spelling Bee champion, was shocked to see that he had been misspelling it” Camero”.” This was very clever, and more than a bit funny as well, but there was one overwhelming favorite this time…

This week, the winning caption came from P161911 (another frequent contributor), and the caption went as follows: “Honest mom, it was loose before I touched it!”. Well now, I guess we don’t ever get tired of how these Malaise Mobiles were just slapped together crap, so congratulations P161911 on winning the Caption Contest for last time.

It’s now time to take a look at this weeks entry, and it is an Print advertising image for the 1978 Oldsmobile Firenza Starfire, which is really GM speak for another Vega derivative that was being produced during this time period. The Mad Men within Oldsmobile’s advertising agency seem to be having a very rough time in trying to distinguish this Starfire from the Buick Skyhawk, the Pontiac Sunbird, or the Chevy Monza. While the Sunbird and the Monza were each blessed with both a Formal Coupe and a Hatchback Coupe (and later, a Wagon Version), The Buick and Oldsmobile versions only offered the three door Hatch, seen here in the more expensive, and sporty Firenza Edition (A name taken from the Chevrolet Firenza Muscle Car produced in South Africa, and later used in a line of undistinguished “J” Cars). This is another perplexing image that dates from the time I was in college, and it shows that no one really knew what age group to pitch the car to. Let’s see if we can get a clue here… Older Women? (Nah), Studious Ambitions Black Males? (I don’t know), Sports Loving Jogger? (He’s not even looking at the car!), Attractive Younger Females? (of which there are two!), or the Middle Management Type who seems to be enamored with an expensive Vega… And is this really any way to entice you to purchase a sporty car of the 70′s in which you could have purchased a Mustang II, Mercury Capri II, A Plymouth Arrow, A Dodge Colt, or even a Toyota Celica by this time. Only you can answer these questions, while we bring you this rather unique image to your otherwise boring Tuesday. (You can click here to see the full size image)

You have the next five days to come up with a great caption. The editors will deliberate on the merits of each entry, and after contemplating our own caption (Like how high were the Ad Men at Oldsmobiles Agency at this time), we will pronounce a winner. So, get to work and create you’re own caption for this provocative image.

Photo Credit: Alden Jewell’s Flickr Photostream